Nobody plays "Can you top this?" better than Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson. Wynn, 64, is standing behind his desk, casually clad in a white polo shirt and beaming from ear to ear--with good reason. This morning he has just pocketed $900 million from the sale of a Macau gaming subconcession. A few days earlier, he opened the Wynn Macau hotel-casino with a barrage of fireworks and dancing fountains. The $1.2 billion, 600-room palace is the first Vegas-style luxury-hotel offering in Asia's booming gambling market. "This is a new Macau," says Wynn. "Would it have been the same without us? I don't think so."
A five-minute drive away, Adelson, chairman of Las Vegas Sands, is thoroughly unimpressed. Adelson, 73, is ensconced in a sofa-laden suite at his own casino, the shimmering gold Sands Macau, being fussed over by an overprotective bodyguard, an intrusive makeup artist and his doctor wife. The Sands has already been raking in a fortune in Macau for two years, and, after a recent expansion, it rates as the largest casino in the world. And he's just getting started. On a band of reclaimed land called Cotai, between Macau's two outer islands, Adelson is creating an Asian Vegas Strip-- practically by himself. By early 2009, he plans to build 12 hotels for $10 billion, anchored by a 3,000-room version of his Vegas classic, the Venetian, with its famous canal and gondola rides. No wonder he derides Wynn's opening as "a nonevent. He's just going to be the equivalent of the tip of the iceberg."
It's Wynn vs. Adelson, Round 2. The two have been banging heads in Las Vegas for years, and now their feud has been airlifted to China. The stakes couldn't be higher--then again, neither could the opportunity. With China's booming economy boosting the incomes of its 1.3 billion baccarat-crazed people by the day, gaming revenues in Macau will probably overtake the Vegas Strip's this year.
What gives this rivalry its extra punch is the obvious antagonism between the Vegas heavyweights. In a corporate world where p.r. spin masters train CEOs to spout boring managementspeak, Adelson and Wynn think nothing of tossing barbs at each other. Adelson complains that Wynn has "a big ego." Wynn calls Adelson "Mr. Magoo, with an edge."
Wynn and Adelson have done more to remake Las Vegas than anyone else, and yet no two businessmen could be less alike. Wynn is Vegas royalty, the artist who rejuvenated the Strip by going upmarket in tone with the Bellagio, which showcased Van Goghs and Cezannes and Degas's dancers instead of topless showgirls. He lost the place to raider Kirk Kerkorian, who took over Wynn's company, Mirage Resorts, and booted Wynn, who scored a $6.4 billion payout but still had a score to settle. Last year Wynn returned with the new Wynn Las Vegas: more hushed, more exclusive.